The best of Prog rock

Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Andressa Urach,
27, claims she died and 'met with her maker' after septic shocked caused her
vital organs to fail - and that she believes she has been given a second chance
to make amends and right the 'errors' she had made in her life.

In an interview
the beauty - now a Brazilian TV host - sobbed as she told how she had been
'born again' after surviving the terrifying ordeal which even her doctors
feared she wouldn't get through alive.

The model,
once considered one of Brazil's most beautiful females, vowed to spend the rest
of her life alerting other women to the dangers of drastic surgery.

Recalling the
moment she 'died', Andressa said: 'I knew that I'd left my body and died. I
arrived in an empty place, like a desert, completely silent. That's when I knew
that God exists. I felt his presence. I knew I was at the judgement.

'My life
flashed before me like a film. I felt ashamed and knew I wasn't worthy to enter
heaven. I asked for forgiveness and begged for another chance, promised to make
amends.

'I'll never forget it. Coming face to face with death, I realized that nothing
else mattered. Everything I had battled for, my beauty, my bags, my clothes, my
car - I'd left all that behind. It was the moment I realized I was nothing,
that we are only here in this world to save our souls.'

She continued:
'I'd give everything to turn back time and do things differently. Nobody knows
what I'm going through, I'm in constant agony. I'm still in the middle of a
horrible nightmare.

'All this I'm
going through is punishment for my stupid vanity.

'I'm ashamed of
the holes in my legs, the scars that will be there for the rest of my life. But
they are also a trophy that I got through this alive. Now, thanks to God, I'm
able to tell other women that vanity isn't everything. If all this serves as an
example to warn others of the dangers of these things, to save other women from
a premature death, then that was the reason I had to go through it.'

Andressa, a
former runner-up in the popular Miss Bumbum beauty pageant, and star of
Brazil's version of reality show The Farm, hit headlines last month after
chemical fillers injected into her thighs began to rot her body tissue.

Procedures to
drain the fillers, hydrogel and PMMA, triggered a life-threatening infection
which sent her body into septic shock within hours of being rushed to hospital.

As doctors
fought to save her, rumours circulated that both her legs had been amputated,
with one news channel even reporting her death, distressing her millions of
devoted fans around the country.

Now back home
at the apartment she shares with her mother in Porto Alegre, southern Brazil,
Andressa knows she still has a long battle ahead of her to a full recovery.

The model, who
also made international headlines when she claimed she'd had an affair with
Real Madrid star Cristiano Ronaldo, had a further scare last week when she ventured
outside for the first time and soon had to be rushed back to hospital in agony
to have her wounds drained.

Clearly in
constant pain and confined to a wheelchair, Andressa's wounds are still seeping
and her bandages have to be changed at least twice a day.

'I never
thought twice about going under the knife, and when people warned me of the
dangers I just thought, "I'll deal with that if it happens". I'd go
to the doctor like I go to the supermarket, saying I wanted this, that and the
other. I just wanted people to look at me and think, "wow".

'Plastic surgery
became an addiction for me. Even when the hydrogel started causing me problems
and I began to have it removed, I was there on the surgery table planning the
next procedure I wanted.

'I was actually
planning to have one of my ribs removed to make me slimmer, and one of my toes
removed to make my feet thinner. Can you believe that? That's how out of
control it had got. That's why I think what happened to me was God telling me,
'hold on, you need to stop'.

'The pain is
indescribable. It's like my skin and muscles have been ripped to shreds. It's a
terrible pain that goes down right to my bones. No-one should ever have to go
through this.'

She also said:
'I always considered myself ugly. I was really thin as a teenager, I even got
bullied at school for being so bony. I wasn't tall enough to be a catalogue
model, but I wanted to be famous. It was a time when all beautiful women on TV
had curves, big bottoms and thighs. Society dictated to me how I should look if
I wanted to be successful.

'I started
taking steroids, but they didn't work, so I opted for surgery.'

Over the
following few years Andressa went under the knife ten times, having a nose job,
a bioplasty facial 'correction', twice having liposuction, two boob jobs,
vaginal lip reduction and twice plumping her thighs with gel fillers hydrogel.

She recalled:
'The hydrogel hadn't absorbed into my body and instead had started to drip down
to the tops of my knees, where a big ball started to form. I had been going to
the gym lifting weights and that had caused it to become inflamed.

'I went to two
doctors but they refused to touch me, they didn't want to have to correct
another surgeon's mistakes. In the end a surgeon friend of the family agreed to
help and I started procedures to remove the fillers. I would go every few
months and have the amount that had collected above my knee removed, then
within weeks it had started to accumulate again.

On November 29
last year, Andressa returned to her apartment from a day on the beach when she
suddenly started feeling excruciating pains in her left thigh.

She said:
'Within three hours I was begging for my mum to call an ambulance. The pain was
absolutely unbearable. I started to vomit violently and my blood pressure
dropped. We couldn't wait for an ambulance so my step-dad had to carry me down
to his car and rush me to hospital. The pain was so bad I was becoming
delirious.'

Andressa was
admitted to the intensive care of the Conceicao hospital in Porto Alegre, but
her condition dramatically worsened.

Within just two
hours her body had gone into septic shock and her vital organs began to shut
down, first her kidneys and then her lungs, and she was put on a life support
machine to keep her alive.

She remembered:
'The last thing I remember was feeling bad because there were two old men sat
on chairs near me because I'd taken the last bed in the ward. My mum said I
needed it more than them. Then I blanked out. I was in a coma for the next
three days.'

Andressa went
through two emergency surgeries, while doctors pumped her body with saline
solution to try to get her kidneys working again.

It was during
this time that, according to Andressa, she had an out-of-body experience and
had an encounter with her creator.

Her eyes
welling up with tears again, she recalled: 'I remember it as clearly as day. I
was in a place, a vast, empty plain, it was so quiet, and I was alone. I felt
that I had died, I knew it. I felt God's presence above me.

'I knew I was
at the judgement, but it wasn't God who was judging me, it was me judging
myself.

'I felt so
ashamed of everything I had done, the way I'd lived my life, the things I had
said and the people I had hurt. I didn't feel good enough to go to heaven and I
bowed my head, feeling so much shame inside of me.

'I called out to God, begging him to give me a second chance. I asked for
forgiveness and asked for him to send me back to life, for the sake of my son.
That's when I woke up, back on the hospital bed.

'But it wasn't
the end. That night I saw something so horrible, the spirits of death circling
me, they were like black clouds but in the form of spirits, I heard screams.
One of them was blacker than the others and I knew that was death coming for my
soul. I remember panicking and screaming for my mother, begging for her to help
me, because I was going to die.'

Churchgoer mum
Marisete, who stayed at her bedside through her entire ordeal, called a pastor
of her church who prayed over her.

'It was the day
God gave me a new chance at life,' Andressa said. 'It was the third of
December, and now every year we are going to commemorate my two birthdays,
October 11 when I was born, and now December 3 when I was born again.'

She said: 'I
remember my mum holding my hand and crying, begging me to eat something and get
stronger. She kept saying she was going to lose me, that I was getting worse
and not better.

'I was in such
a bad state that the doctors warned my mum to not expect me to leave hospital
until at least the end of February.

'That's when my
second miracle happened. One day, my mum had gone to church and I was alone. I
remembered something the pastor had said to me, that I could claim my healing
if I really believed. So I prayed to God and claimed that I would be better in
seven days.

'I started to
get better, surprising all the doctors. And you know what, exactly seven days
later I was discharged from hospital and came home.'

One of the
first things Andressa did when she left hospital was to ask for forgiveness to
everyone she had hurt or fallen out with.

'I was guilty of being vain and arrogant. I would open my mouth without
thinking, and sometimes I would end up hurting people. Sometimes I would hurt
people just by the way I was. I realise I have to reeducate myself to be a
different, better person. That was the first step, to make amends with everyone
I'd ever fallen out with.'

She said: 'I'm
in the public eye, so people heard about me. But what about all the other women
around the world who are dying because of cosmetic surgery and nobody gets to
hear? How many women have injected themselves with these substances believing
they need to conform to a certain image, and ended up dead? Personally I think
the person who invented them needs to be thrown into prison.

'Please,
ladies, don't do it. It's a poison you're putting into your body, something you
are risking your whole life for. It's not worth it. Believe me, I found out the
hard way.'